Now Calling Pitches, Not Signals

By RAY GLIER
March 4, 2009


TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — As a promising high school catcher, Chris Smelley once hoped to play in the majors, but football — the giant of the South — grabbed him and would not let go.

The blasts of noise inside the colossal stadiums of the Southeastern Conference were exhilarating, the players were heroes and the teamwork necessary to win in a caldron of 80,000 fans sharpened skills. It all seemed so irresistible to Smelley, who happened to be a promising quarterback, too.

“We wanted him, but it’s hard to give up being a quarterback at a big school in the South,” Jim Wells, the baseball coach at the University of Alabama, said recently. “Even Mickey Mantle had to think about what he was going to do. It is a hard thing to lay down, even if your future is in the other sport.”

In February 2006, Smelley passed up a baseball scholarship at Alabama to play football for Coach Steve Spurrier at South Carolina. But after three fitful seasons with the Gamecocks, Smelley, 22, has returned home to play baseball for the Crimson Tide. He has also talked to Alabama’s football coach, Nick Saban, about the possibility of playing for him in 2010.

“Most people wouldn’t have the chance to do what I’m doing,” he said. “I kind of feel lucky. It’s like I am getting to go to college twice.”

The ethos of the two sports could not be more stark. On a cool night in late February, the Alabama baseball fans offered no postgame adoration. Smelley was behind the head of a push broom, sweeping sunflower seeds into a pile in the Crimson Tide dugout. It is what first-year players are expected to do.

Alabama defeated Nicholls State, 8-7, before a scattered crowd of about 1,000, far from the masses who flocked to South Carolina football games at Williams-Brice Stadium.

Smelley looked up after creating a nice pile of spent seed sleeves and dirt, and he smiled genuinely. He said he harbored no bitterness about initially choosing football over baseball.

He had been an all-state catcher and an all-state quarterback at American Christian Academy here, playing on three state championship teams in baseball and two in football. He set a state record for career touchdown passes (134), and the tug of football proved greater than the pull of a baseball scholarship and the potential of playing major league baseball.

Smelley sounds grateful for his time at South Carolina. Spurrier had an intense focus on detail, and Smelley said he developed inner strength by playing for a coach who tends to play the quarterback with the hot hand.

“It was a kind of a roller-coaster ride during the season sometimes — a lot of good, a lot of bad — but that’s part of being in the SEC, the competition and then playing for Coach Spurrier,” Smelley said. “It’s not always something that you enjoyed, being on a short leash and not knowing what would happen.”

Benched off and on by Spurrier, Smelley is now benched by an N.C.A.A. rule instituted this year that requires baseball players who transfer in the middle of the academic year to sit out the spring season. He can still practice.

“He’s picking up things very quickly,” Wells said. “When he was out here the first week or so, he looked like a guy who hadn’t played baseball in a couple of years. He is in a perfect situation for us, not having to rush him in there.”

At South Carolina, Smelley redshirted his freshman season, then became the on-again, off-again starter in 2007 and 2008. His best game came Oct. 4, 2008, at Mississippi, where he completed 22 of 32 passes for a career-high 327 yards in a 31-24 victory over the Rebels. That was a week after Ole Miss defeated the eventual national champion, Florida.

The low point came in the final regular-season game against rival Clemson. Smelley threw four interceptions in a 31-14 loss, and Spurrier then picked Stephen Garcia, a redshirt freshman, to start the bowl game against Iowa.

Some uneasiness remains when Smelley talks about his relationship with Spurrier. He starts to express himself, then reconsiders and backs away from the topic.

Spurrier said he did not argue with Smelley or his father, Bart, when they told him in a January meeting that Smelley would transfer.

“We thought he had a chance to be a good player, and he was sort of hot and cold, off and on, so I think he and his family felt like it was time to go back to Tuscaloosa, and I agreed with them,” Spurrier said. “I said, ‘If I was you, I would go back to Alabama — it’s where you belong.’ I think it’s a good move for him. It was time for him to go give baseball a good effort.”

Football trampled on Smelley’s emotions once before. He received scholarship offers from a number of major programs, including South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana State, Mississippi and Louisville. But Smelley was not offered a scholarship right away from his hometown university because Alabama was chasing Tim Tebow.

After Tebow picked Florida over Alabama, Mike Shula, then the coach of the Crimson Tide, offered Smelley a scholarship. Smelley had committed to South Carolina, where he also hoped to try to play baseball. Ultimately, the demands of being an SEC quarterback prevented it.

Smelley will still wear pads because he is a catcher, but the collisions will probably not be as frightful.

“Glenn Dorsey got hold of me a couple of times,” he said, referring to the former L.S.U. all-American defensive lineman. “I guarantee nobody coming around third base toward the plate is going to be that big or that strong.”

His broom put away, Smelley was the last player to leave Sewell-Thomas Stadium. Instead of being besieged for autographs, the way SEC quarterbacks are, he walked out alone.

“There’s a big difference playing in front of 90,000 and playing in front of a few thousand,” he said. “That will be one of the things I miss.”

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